Change in the Trenches: Continuous Improvement of Service Processes Copyright CAUSE 1994. This paper was presented at the 1993 CAUSE Annual Conference held in San Diego, California, December 7-10, and is part of the conference proceedings published by CAUSE. Permission to copy or disseminate all or part of this material is granted provided that the copies are not made or distributed for commercial advantage, that the CAUSE copyright notice and the title and authors of the publication and its date appear, and that notice is given that copying is by permission of CAUSE, the association for managing and using information technology in higher education. To copy or disseminate otherwise, or to republish in any form, requires written permission from CAUSE. For further information: CAUSE, 4840 Pearl East Circle, Suite 302E, Boulder, CO 80301; 303449-4430; e-mail info@cause.colorado.edu Change in the Trenches: Continuous Improvement of Service Processes Connie Towler and Douglas Renick Harvard Quality Process Harvard University CAUSE '93 Getting Started Over the past three years of implementation of the Quality Process at Harvard, we have worked with managers, supervisors, and staff to help them understand the concepts of TQM and how they might apply at Harvard University. This work began in the Office for Information Technology (OIT). We have put some of these techniques in place and many problem-solving teams have been successful in improving productivity and saving money. We were, therefore, able to build on this positive experience with key managers in the organization and when we were ready to launch the Service Process Improvement program, they were ready and, in some cases, waiting for this next step in our journey. OIT began its training component of implementing TQM with a basic Problem-Solving Team Training module. Added to that in the following year and one-half were Team Facilitator training, a workshop on Benchmarking, and Customer Service training modules for front-line staff and management staff. A module on Service Process Improvement was added this year. This module, unlike Problem-Solving Team Training, was designed using the concepts of JIT (just-in-time) training, with participants working on actual processes. While the pilot program was quite successful in that the teams achieved their goals or at least made significant progress, they were mixed in their reactions to the training. Some felt that the pressure to meet the training deadlines inhibited them in their process improvement. They wanted to work at their own pace and not on a schedule determined by others. Accustomed as we are to listening and reacting to our customers, we re-designed the program to use a case study in the training instead of actual processes. What is Service Process Improvement (SPI)? We chose the title Service Process Improvement to emphasize that all processes are driven by customer satisfaction. In this program, teams of participants learn how to identify and specify their customers' requirements and how to determine their customers' current satisfaction levels. These customers might be internal or external to the organization. The program emphasizes Service Process Improvement which requires that participants understand: 1. processes and systems, 2. how to map or flow chart them, and 3. how to measure them, not only in terms of results, but in terms of key variables upstream from the results. The aim is to teach people to build quality into the process, which eliminates the waste of rework and ensures customer satisfaction. Problem-Solving Team Training, a Pre-Requisite: Problem solving is a part of any service process improvement. So that we would not have to stop the flow of the work once we started the process improvement, we made Problem-Solving Team Training a pre-requisite to the Service Process Improvement Training. Included in the Problem-Solving Team Training is practical application, using a case study, of many of the basic quality tools: Pareto, histogram, fishbone, force field analysis, et cetera. Some refresher might be necessary as we proceed with process improvement, depending on the length of time between these two programs; however, it would probably not be a significant delay. By making the Problem-Solving Team Training a pre- requisite, we also avoided a facilitator's worst nightmare of some people having had the basic training and some not. Objectives of the Program As teams began the Service Process Improvement program we established these objectives: At the end of the program the teams will have improved the effectiveness of one work process and will have learned: * how to identify and flowchart a work process * how to measure the capability of a process * how to obtain customer requirements and to specify them * how to measure customer satisfaction with the output of the process being improved * the interaction between service process improvement and problem solving * re-learned the importance of creating a high performance team through the use of good interaction skills, good meeting management, and consensus decision making Selecting a Team to Attend SPI Training To help managers understand the selection process they might use to identify who should attend this program, we formed the following guidelines. Guidelines for Selecting a Team to Attend SPI Training The team you select to send to SPI training might be formed by thinking about the work process or processes you would like to see improved. You want to include people on the team who have ownership and responsibility for a process or set of processes. You are empowering your team to document a process, to discover how it does and does not work, and you are asking them to interact with the customer to discover the customer's current level of satisfaction and exact requirements for the output of the process. The team should have 4 to 6 members. We are using as a resource for the training a booklet by Richard Chang called "Continuous Process Improvement." Chang suggests the following guidelines for choosing a work process to improve. "Processes selected for improvement should typically be considered critical to the organization, ones where customers are not satisfied with the specific outputs being produced. In addition, some or all of the following process characteristics may exist: * Problems experienced by external and/or internal customers * Complaints received from external or internal customers * High degree of non-value-added effort involved * High maintenance costs, i.e., too complex, too many people and/or functional areas involved, requires ongoing fixes * More advanced technology available than is currently being used. "To increase your chance of success, select a process that: * The customer benefits from or cares about * You have a moderate to high level of control over * Is important to the ongoing performance of the organization * Is stable enough to analyze, measure, and improve. "In addition, the organization should be able to dedicate the appropriate financial, and human resources for improving this process." You may want to pick a team that has responsibility for several processes, giving them the freedom to choose a process to improve. We will be asking teams to keep managers informed at each step of the improvement process. The Original Design This module began using the concepts of JIT (just in time) training, with participants working on actual processes from their every-day work life. The teams were given time between sessions to collect data from the customer and perform tasks required in the process improvement effort. The outline for our first training effort looked like this: First Design Service Process Improvement Training Program Schedule Session 1 - 3 hours Overview of SPI Review of processes chosen by teams Methods for identifying customer requirements and levels of satisfaction Teams plan to identify requirements and satisfaction level 2-1/2 week break Session II - 4 hours Reports on requirements and satisfaction Flowcharting the process Identifying strengths and weaknesses of the process Measuring the process 2-1/2 week break Session III - 2 hours Reports on process performance Review of process improvement methods and problem-solving process Write "as is" and "desired state" statements 3 week break Session IV - 2 hours Reports on solution(s) chosen, plans for implementing, tracking, and evaluating Standardizing the improved process 4 week break Session V - 2 hours Reports on results and standardization Evaluation of training and application process Graduation and celebration Program Re-Design The re-designed program is different in the following ways: * Length of the program: The program is shorter: the training time for the original program was 12 hours, the new program is 9 hours. The program is also more compact: instead of spreading the program out over 12 weeks, we now conduct SPI training in 3 half days spread over 3 weeks. * Approach We are using a case study in the re-designed program, not real processes. This, again, was a request from the participants in our pilot training program. Re-Design Service Process Improvement Session I - 3 1/2 hours * Conceptual overview of SPI SAMIE (Select, Analyze, Measure, Improve Evaluate) model and its relation to Problem Solving * Program Objectives * Simulation of Process Improvement - Collating Exercise * Review of key concepts and practices in TQM as they relate to SPI * Introduction to the case study * Team Meeting 1 SAMIE steps 1 and 2 - Case--Part 1: the organization or department, its context and situation, services provided, customers and identification of something about the process that will be the focus of the case. * Questions for the team: - Who is the customer(s)? - What is the service provided? - What is the process to be improved, its boundaries--inputs and outputs? - Who is the process owner? Is this a process that is a candidate for the SPI approach? How will you find out the customer's requirements and the current level of customer satisfaction? - Clarify concepts covered: 1. a process--its owner, its boundaries 2. SPI and processes 3. services provided 4. customer(s) * Presentation on how one identifies customer requirements, and how these are translated into the work unit's specifications. Measuring customer satisfaction. The basics of flow charting. * Team meeting 2 SAMIE steps 1, 3 and 4 - Case--Part 2: Results of interviews with customers and a focus group. Results of a customer survey. * Questions: - What are the customer's requirements? Work unit specifications? - What is the current level of satisfaction? Is it worth improving the process? - Case--Part 3: The current process in narrative form. Task for the team: - Create a flow chart of the process. - Identify any known performance gaps (ways in which customers requirements are not being met.) * Clarify concepts: - customer requirements and departmental specifications - Flow charting * Assignment on measuring Session II - 3 1/2 hours * Team Meeting 3 SAMIE step 5 * Questions: - How will you measure output? - What measures could you create upstream in the process? * Presentation: Brief review of the problem solving process. * Team Meeting 4 SAMIE step 6 - Case--Part 4: Baseline performance data. * Questions: Are there performance gaps? If so, where in the process? * Tasks: List performance gaps. Choose one gap as a problem to be solved. Write AS IS and Desired State statements. Fishbone potential causes of the problem. * Team Meeting 5 SAMIE step 7 - Case--Part 5: Data on causes. * Question: What are the key causes of the problem? * Team Meeting 6 SAMIE step 7 - Tasks: Brainstorm solutions. Clarify. Support and disagree. Bracket. Combine. Name the categories of solutions. Session III - 2 hours * Team Meeting 7 SAMIE step 7 - Tasks: Select a solution using weighted voting, discussion and consensus. Plan the solution using a Gantt chart. Talk through implementation and evaluation--SAMIE steps 8 and 9 * Talk about standardization--SAMIE step 10. * Summary and review of participant objectives. * Teams meet with facilitators to plan their first meeting. Results and Learnings It has been stated above that the JIT aspect of the first SPI program did not work well. Teams working on improving real processes proceeded at very different paces. The training became a distraction. Teams felt that they had to stop the real work on the process to complete the training assignment for the next session. Yet one team, the telecommunications team, felt that being asked to measure their process was the real breakthrough that took them beyond the problem-solving process. They never would have measured - because they felt that they knew what was wrong! The results of the measurements confirmed their hunches, but gave them confidence that they were on the right track. This team also felt that the constant emphasis on listening to the customer and applying what you hear leads to looking at things in a different way. The team began by asking: "how can we improve our voice mail system." With this focus the team bogged down. Listening to the customer opened up the possibility of doing away with the voice mail system except when it was needed to handle the large volume of calls in peak periods. A team looking at the return policy at the Technology Product Center discovered that process improvement didn't apply very well to a discreet policy decision. Another team working on the maintenance system for the local area network in a particular building did not have a process in place on which to make improvements. The process had to be created. The training was only somewhat useful for this team. The learning here is: be careful to apply process improvement only where it is applicable and helpful. One facilitator reported: "The quality process helped drill in the notion that we must be customer focused both individually and organizationally. SPI goes a step further and helps us to view what we do for customers-- almost everything we do--as a process. "Recognizing that what we do in serving customers is a process is a very powerful new awareness. Reifying the process, making it an object that can be measured, studied, tweaked and gradually improved as we measure it, brings us to a very different mindset and into a very different relationship with our work. SPI gives us the knowledge along with the right tools for controlling our work processes, for changing them in ways that make a difference to us and to the customer. We become the subject instead of the object ... the actor instead of the acted upon. "Whereas before the job seemed like random human interactions that cannot be controlled or improved, SPI helps us to see it differently, to understand the inputs and the outputs, to focus on the process variation and to measure the resulting gulf between what we are providing and what the customer is really telling us she wants. "As a facilitator, though, I learned that success does not come easily. If the suggested improvements were not made, participants ended up believing that SPI was just another training effort that in the final analysis could not make the bureaucracy adopt needed changes." Teams reported that it was an obstacle to effective work together that some team members had been trained in problem solving, team interaction skills, and good meeting management practices -- and some had not. This situation makes it difficult for the facilitator and for the team members. And it takes more time for teams to make progress. Summary In summary: * Process improvement training can have significant payoffs for teams and the organization. * Use a case study of process improvement for the training. * Flow charting and measuring processes are valuable skills for teams. * Help managers choose appropriate processes to work on. * Be sure that all team members have been trained in problem solving, team interaction, and meeting management skills. * Be sure managers understand the importance of empowering teams to make improvements. Primary Resources for Service Process Improvement Leadership Through Quality: Concepts of Quality, Quality Improvement Process Reference Manual. Stamford, Connecticut: Xerox Corporation, 188. Chang, Richard, "Continuous Process Improvement," in InfoLine. (Issue 9210). Alexandria, Va.: American Society for Training and Development, 1992. Process Quality Management and Improvement Guidelines. Indianapolis, Indiana: AT&T Customer Information Center, 1987. Harrington, H.J., Business Process Improvement. New York: McGraw- Hill, Inc., 1991.